ABSTRACT
The London Working Men’s Association was founded in June 1836, with William Lovett as secretary and Henry Hetherington as treasurer. It was conceived as an exclusive club committed to agitation for social and political improvement through lawful means. Members of the middle classes were ineligible for full membership, and in practice few day labourers were regarded as sufficiently educated to be admitted. In the early months of 1839 many new associations, or ‘chartist lodges’ as they were often called, sprang up in the ironworking and mining districts of the coalfield. Local initiative was frequently taken by artisans and craftsmen if only because they had hours of work sufficiently flexible to enable them to undertake the necessary organisation; shoemakers were particularly well represented among the lodge secretaries and treasurers. In 1839 Morgan Williams and William Lloyd Jones were around 30 years of age, and William Price, Zephaniah Williams and William Edwards were in their early to mid-forties.
